Iowa State’s Michael Bugeja makes a strong point in a Poynter Institute column (June 30, 2022) about how some Republican candidates use the term “RINO” — Republican in Name Only” — to describe other Republicans who show “apparent disloyalty to Trump as GOP kingmaker.”
His commentary includes Republican Jim Jones, who in 2021 provided a history of the term (dating back to the 1800s) and pushed back against those who currently use the term to describe any fellow party member who dares suggest that former President Trump did not win the 2020 election.
Jones wrote that a “a true Republican should be a strong supporter of civil rights and strongly opposed to insurrection. Since many modern Republicans in Congress and many residents of secessionist states seem hostile to civil rights and soft on insurrection, they are the true RINOs.”
And it’s not just this term that journalists and others should consider. Many clever terms — “RINO,” “tort reform,” “build back better,” etc. — are designed to sell a point of view with the hopes that audiences won’t think too deeply about what the term means.
RINO is classic “name calling,” one of the seven classic techniques described by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis just before World War II. (See Box 9.2, pages 282-284, in the Doing Ethics in Media textbook, for more.)
It’s the job of journalists to not take the bait — and to help people think for themselves. The best journalists find ways to work through the propaganda, such reminding readers that one person’s “reform” may come at another person’s expense.
The Associated Press Stylebook is a good place to help spot such things. It’s entry on “reform” notes that the term “generally implies faults or shortcomings,” and that a neutral term may be better.
At some point, maybe the Stylebook will catch a RINO.